Summary
Captured by Germans after World War II's Battle of the Bulge, soldier Kurt Vonnegut and other prisoners were taken to Dresden, Germany, where they were confined in a cement enclosure used for butchering livestock and called "Slaughterhouse-Five." Several weeks later, American and British planes firebombed Dresden, killing 135,000 civilians and leveling the city. Amazingly, the prisoners survived, by taking cover in an underground meat locker. Vonnegut spent two decades coming to grips with the experience, producing this classic American novel as his ultimate response to the ordeal. In this new collection of critical essays, students of literature will find information about the author's life and other works, an index for quick reference, notes on the contributing writers, and an introductory essay by noted literary scholar Harold Bloom.
Specifications
Chronology. Bibliography. Index.
About the Author(s)
Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. Educated at Cornell and Yale universities, he is the author of 30 books, including Shelley's Mythmaking (1959), The Visionary Company (1961), Blake's Apocalypse (1963), Yeats (1970), A Map of Misreading (1975), Kabbalah and Criticism (1975), Agon: Toward a Theory of Revisionism (1982), The American Religion (1992), The Western Canon (1994), Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996), and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), a 1998 National Book Award finalist. The Anxiety of Influence (1973) sets forth Professor Bloom's provocative theory of the literary relationships between the great writers and their predecessors. His most recent books include How to Read and Why (2000), Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (2002), Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (2003), Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? (2004), and Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2005). In addition, he is the author of hundreds of articles, reviews, and editorial introductions. In 1999, Professor Bloom received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism. He has also received the International Prize of Catalonia, the Alfonso Reyes Prize of Mexico, and the Hans Christian Andersen Bicentennial Prize of Denmark.